Vehicle owners or users are frequently assessed a fee for the use of commonly or publicly owned infrastructure such as toll roads, bridges and tunnels. Such fees are typically referred to as tolls. The public is required to fund the development and maintenance of such infrastructure primarily through the use of various taxes including in particular a tax on fuel. Significant inequities however occur because such taxes as the fuel tax are not paid by infrastructure users in proportion to their use of the infrastructure. For example, vehicles which have a greater fuel economy pay less and electric vehicles pay nothing. Tolls which are collected at particular locations along a highway or at the entrance of a tunnel additionally only crudely tax vehicles in proportion to their use. Such tax collection and tolling systems are additionally expensive to implement and can contribute to congestion on the nation's roadways as vehicles queue waiting to pay the toll. Because of these inequities and inefficiencies, there is a need for a ubiquitous and fair infrastructure charging system to eliminate the drawbacks of the current system.
A detailed discussion of additional background information is set forth in applications referenced above, for example, U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 09/679,317, 10/822,445, 11/028,386, 11/034,325, 11/421,500 and 12/061,943 all of which are incorporated by reference herein.
All of the patents, patent applications, technical papers and other references mentioned below and in the applications referenced above are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. No admission is made that any or all of these references are prior art and indeed, it is contemplated that they may not be available as prior art when interpreting 35 U.S.C. §102 in consideration of the claims of the present application.
Definitions of terms used in the specification and claims are also found in the applications referenced above.